Guan Di lot 59 of 100
A cold, empty house
Middling (中平, 己壬). Grades differ between editions, and many Taiwanese temples print none. Shown as Wikisource gives it. Wikisource prints no stem pair for this lot, so 己壬 is from manekineko.com.tw.
門衰戶冷苦伶仃
自嘆祈求不一靈
幸有祖宗陰騭在
香煙未斷續螟蛉
The house has declined and the household is cold and lonely.
You sigh that your prayers have not been answered.
Luckily your ancestors left hidden merit.
The incense smoke will not be cut off, and a foster child continues the line.
What this lot says
This is a lot of comfort for a lonely stretch. The verse says that things are bleak and prayers seem unheard, but that older goodness is still working for you.
It speaks of family continuing through an adopted child. Read it widely: it says what you are carrying on will not be lost.
A lot is a prompt for reflection. It cannot promise a result, and it is no substitute for medical, legal or financial advice.
The story behind it
Deng Bodao has no son (鄧伯道無兒)
According to the account on Wikisource, Deng You of the Jin dynasty fled with his family from soldiers and, to save his nephew, tied his own son to a tree and left. He later became a governor and a respected official but never had another child.
Source: Wikisource, 關聖帝君靈籤/59, the 故事及記載 section
Where this text comes from
This verse is a traditional temple text with no known author. We read it from two named web transcriptions, Chinese Wikisource (the base text) and manekineko.com.tw. Neither is a scan of a printing, the edition behind them is mixed, and we could not establish whether the two are independent of each other.
Wikisource (關聖帝君靈籤) (the text shown above)
門衰戶冷苦伶仃 / 自嘆祈求不一靈 / 幸有祖宗陰騭在 / 香煙未斷續螟蛉
Retrieved 2026-11-09. Transcription licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
manekineko.com.tw (富貴轉運站)
門衰戶冷苦伶仃 / 自嘆祈求不一靈 / 幸有祖宗陰騭在 / 香煙未斷續螟蛉
Retrieved 2026-11-09
Where the sources differ
- Line 2: a note in Wikisource's transcription gives 可 for 自, apparently a variant reading.
English translation, meaning and story summaries are by Cast & Chart.